Daedelus Workshop Study Group

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Bham, I am just throwing this here quickly, a follow-up from the thumbs:



Will take a peek into your new posts tomorrow!

[Wheeljack18]

These look great Ellis. You are improving with every new piece. I think 1-3 and 6 are your most successful. I see hat you are posting on Deviantart quite a bit. What is your impression of the community over there?

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Alright! Finally got time to write a bit more here.

@Wheel: Thanks, it felt really refreshing to be able to hit some other colour & lighting schemes than just normal white daylight. I am most probably going to take the 1th further. It needs some shaping to make the comp work better, but I am sure the finishing will be a fun ride. I feel real good about the others you mentioned too, personally I would probably prefer the fifth one a bit over the sixth. Most people have named 1, 2 and 5 as their favourites.

Some common probs among those I notice: A bit too diffused lighting there n here and some colour schemes could use a bit of more work. Also I could've been braver with the perspective & tried to get some mid-scaled compositions in too. Meaning, some images with more restricted space eg: cottage in a deep forest. It is actually an issue to me, because I find that kind of closer stuff rather hard, I'll take that problem on after this is done.

Mm, deviantart. From what I have gathered from my personal experiences and others's notes, I could really say that place is rather goody to gain up some fanbase (albeit young fanbase, but still fanbase). For work etc. all of the professionals I've seen commenting the issue have said they get absolutely no serious job offers from there. So to sum up, it is rather hobbyist place, stuff is all around et all, but it is good to get some fans.

Oh, I am going to reserve my flight tickets to vancouver next weekend, probably around 16th of agust.

@eb, I'll write something up about those pieces as soon as possible! I really like your traditional work.

[Wheeljack18]

Hey Eelis, Too bad you are not going to Van earlier as I'll be in town around the beginning of August for about 10 days. I have to be back home by the 15th so I guess we'll be missing each other. Any luck with finding a place yet?

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Oh, you were around that early. The flight date is rather flexible for me though, and I would really like to meet up with ya and get some grip of the city. You are probably around the week 6.8-12.8? (or is it actually marked 8.12-8.6 in canada?) If yes, I can most probably travel during that week too.

No luck yet, but I have no worries about it really. Decided to find a suitable apartment just for myself first and then search for dog-friendly place while I am there & important that little chap in there later . Can't get a roomie because of that though. But yeah, keeping a close eye on the rents, also checking out how the train system works in the vancouver region, pondering if I could rent something just a bit outside the city, but yeah, not worried.

[Eelis Kyttänen]

We moved our timetable discussion to private email, eb.

Alright, here's the current iteration of the top left of those thumbnails. It is still in the putting the exact composition/values/colours up, so no real detailing. Some problems I see: More contrast, stronger shadows because the light should be so..strong.



EDIT: Now that a day has passed I have came into conclusion that even though I like the colours I think the composition is just crap, boring and oversimiliar to some of my recent works. Back to the sketching table.

[David Keen]

Eelis, that bunch of thumbs are absolutely rocking it! My favourites are 1, 2 & 6 but the first one is ahead by leaps and bounds. I see that you've decided not to push the piece any further but I'd encourage you to have another look at it and see which part of the composition are falling flat and try to address the issues. I feel that the left third of the image is the weakest part with some areas that don't have clear definition and are a little confusing for the viewer. I also wonder if placing a large object in the middle ground on the right might break up the composition a bit and create some variety. I think it would be a shame to give up on this one when to me there is a great piece here that just needs some extra love and attention to bring it out.

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Thanks eb. I am still considering continuing with this overall comp even though I was pretty unconditional yesterday. I am just having this feeling at the back of my head that this looks too much like the last mountain picture with the gazer at the same area & vanishing mountainline at the left too.

Gotta figure it out.

[Wheeljack18]

Hey guys,

I hope to post up some work for Daedelus sometime this week.

Anyways Eelis. I know you are done with the composition and you have decided to move on but you really need to finish it. Other wise you will end up with a large body of unfinished work which is good for nothing and will eventually start to demotivate you. The idea is to start a piece and finish it and learn from it and move on. The level of finish is up to you and it doesn't have to be a master piece. If you want to be a professional someday, you might as well start training for it now and put yourself ahead of your classmates. In the real world you can't say to an AD, I don't like where this is going so I'm just not going to finish it. I'm only saying this to you because I used to do the same thing and I ended up with a very thin portfolio coming out of school and it had a negative impact on my career. Who cares if it is great or not. Just finish it, move on, add it to your current portfolio and eventually replace it when you next paint something better. Who knows, you might end up liking it.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents for ya

Eb: When do you think we will see the next installment of your book cover series?

Cheers Fellas!

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Darn, sorry wheel, you got me wrong. I think I am to blame for that since the edit I added to my original post kinda reads like I was just going to scrap it. I wasn't going to let it go at all, just trim the composition (even though more or less hugely) so that it would appear a bit more unique compared to my recent stuff.

So, I was extremely happy with colours, horse & man elements, body of water and a few of the mountains, but I hadn't thought out the composition well enough before I went on and posted it up. So I was definitely going to continue with the piece, but make some drastic changes to the overall composition.

I am indeed sorry if I came out with a bad attitude, but I swear it ain't the case here.

I understand when doing professional work to real clients you can't just do huge changes if your client has approved the preliminary stages, but I think I can give myself the freedom here, as you said there's no better learning than learning by making not-so-good pieces, learning from them and possibly going over and doing it again with the tweaks.

Oh, thanks for the job link you send me over email. Judging from it and a few others environment studio jobs I've looked up they really, really want someone with extra-skills like textures etc. too. I'll have to take a look into those thingies later on.

Cheers, hopefully you can post some stuff here soonish too, can't wait!

[Wheeljack18]

Hah hah! We'll it wouldn't be the first time I misinterpreted something

Sounds to me like you are on the right track then so I'll just stand by and wait for the next iteration.

Talk to you guys soon.

[Eelis Kyttänen]

No worries Mike, I was very confusing myself!

Though, I'll admit your words about finishing things that you have started ring very true to me. I think we have talked about this before too, but I really have got that problem sometimes of letting go of works, not finishing em at all even if they are in later stages. I think I have kinda began to get rid of it, but there can never be enough reminders to me about that thing, because it is a real problem that could indeed hinge the progress.

On another note, I have been researching some pencil techniques lately, since I have never really paid much attention into the deeper stuff that it holds. Came across this real popular and probably real basic method, but of which I hadn't ever heard:

http://www.sightsize.com/castdrawing.html

Really widened up the possibilities of how the drawing progression with pencil can work, great stuff!

[David Keen]

Oh man, I apologise as well Eelis. Text is so open to interpretation, it can get very confusing! I'm glad to hear you're going to keep working on the piece, it's gonna look awesome.

My stuff is coming along, I've had 50% of my assessment for the semester this week and it's been a complete nightmare! Thankfully all the graphic design stuff is pretty much out of the way and I should have a pretty solid 2 weeks to work on the paintings without a great deal of distraction.

I'll throw some updates up for the paintings over the weekend when I get a second.

I hope you guys are going well.

[Wheeljack18]

Hey Guys,

I just did a major sketch dump on my blog and I also did a smaller update on my SB page. I don't want to hijack this thread and post all the stuff here but suffice it to say, I've been doing a lot of studies. For a more in depth story, you can read my blog. I'm also working on wrapping up the Sethlan but I'm having a hard time staying motivated. I think this one is a perfect example of why one should not leave a piece unfinished. It just drags at your neck until it is done. That and I have a couple of ideas that I want to run by you. I'll do a separate post on that soon. In the meantime, I'm posting one pic because I like it and I want to feel like I am contributing some art to this thread too

Eelis: I checked out that technique. Have you ever looked into Barque drawing? If not look it up as that method is a far superior and time tested method for learning and cast drawing. The barque method gives you tools to help you learn and figure out proportion while this method basically consists of "Sit and draw it until you get it right". This is one way to learn but let me compare it to learning to play the piano. Either you can learn by ear or by reading music. If you learn by ear, you know what sounds correct but you may not understand why a note is off nor would you be quite as able to explain it to someone else. When you learn by reading music, you understand all the technical things like scales and notes etc and you gain a language by which you can communicate music with others. Drawing by sight is the same as learning by ear. Some people learn best with this method but not me.

Once more, I've chipped in my 2 cents. You guys must get sick of my long tirades on art!

Eb:What does 50% of your assessments mean? Are you halfway through your semester? Finish Mid terms? Sorry, I just don't get Aussie Uni speak lol. Post up what you can, when you can and we'll pitch in with a crit or two. Also, I re read the D and D art test brief and I think they do want you to do an Orc. Bah!

[Wheeljack18]

Alright boys. Finally, we have a completed Sethlan for our fictional Mass Effect character design.

What do you think? I stuck to the last image and I did not clutter it up too much with extra stuff although that could be an upgrade. Altogether I think I over worked it for a concept.

You thoughts? C and C? I did not do a background because when I was talking with a concept artist at Bioware, one of the things he suggested was that I did not do the background as well as put more effort into details, texture/ materials.

Thanks

[David Keen]

Mike, I looked through your sketchbook post and am now feeling very guilty about the amount of study I've been getting done recently. I've been feeling this way for a while and a few days ago decided to draw up a monthly checklist for charting my the time I dedicate to personal work. Hopefully this will make me a little more accountable and help me set aside time for personal projects. In my last post when I spoke about 50% of my assessments being completed I mean't that last week I handed up almost half my major assignments for the semester and will hopefully have a little breathing room now. After the 13th of July I'll be done with uni for six weeks and will be trying to make up for lost time on Daedelus projects.

I think the Sethlan has turned out very well, he holds true to the brief and the rendering looks good. The texture work is especially effective, it enhances the piece but doesn't dominate the whole image. The advice from the guy at Bioware makes a lot of sense, probably something we should all think about in our future concept art pieces.

Below are some scans of two of the final drawings for my paintings and a colour comp of the second painting. There were some changes that I would have liked to have made to the drawings but simply didn't have time to execute. Rest assured that all your crits are present in my mind and will be carefully considered as I get into the paintings. The colours for the image are proving a real nightmare though, this is the third attempt I've made at sorting out the colour scheme. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

I hope you guys are well!

[David Keen]

Ps the colour sketch it only intended as a way to work out the colour placement and I haven't paid any attention to the anatomy of the figures which is why they look a little funky.

[David Keen]

After seeing Mike's finished Sethlan I decided to use my spare time today to go back and do a few more little sketches. I really enjoyed doing these and it was interesting to note which ones flowed onto the page without any effort and those that had to be laboured on. I'll bet you can guess the two that gave me the most trouble!

[David Keen]

Hey guys. here is an update on the current painting. For a first pass on the background I was pretty pleased, I can't wait to get into figure town tomorrow!

[Wheeljack18]

Wow! look at all the activity. Daedelus has been revived!

So Eb likes the Sethlan I did. GREAT! No changes then? How about you Eelis?

Eb's Sethlan: It's good to see you are still interested on this one. Do you think that you might want to eventually finish it? If you do, go back and re read your brief because you emphasized that he needs some sort of air filtration system and I only saw that on one or two pieces. Still, it's good to see you back concepting again. Post more as they come

Eb Paintings:

The image looks good so far and I'm jealous that you have such a clean and organized workspace! The background seems to be coming along nicely and before I remark, I'd like The nature painter of the group Eelis to Chime in with his two cents. The only thing that stands out to me at this juncture is the floaty guys shoulders are still Way off. Are you planning to fix that in the painting later on? Let me know if you want some direction on that.

Great work EB I'm inspired.

[Eelis Kyttänen]

I am real glad to see you guys have had some free time to do some stuff for good ol' Daedelus! Such a sprinkle of activity and artistic glamour! Great!

#Wheel: Oh, Barque drawing is an actual technique? I have seen that thread about barques on art discussion forums here and just tought it meant drawing some baroc plate series with extreme detail. Got that idea without any googling, how off can one be? I'll check it out immediately!

Good point about techniquess usefulness being related to the person in question. I should really keep on exploring different techniques and styles and see what comes out of it. Don't really know what fits me best yet, haven't really given a tought about it for some reason.

The sketch you posted is goody. I really like the linework, that's something I should really work on with pencils. Also checked your SB, great deal of studies indeed! Makes me also a bit remorseful that I haven't really done real figure drawing & learning ever, even though I am environment oriented.

I am hoping to pick up a life-drawing figure class outside of school when I get to Vancouver for that purpose!

About sethlan, great that you were able to finish it. Dragging of projects can be a real nuisance indeed. I quite agree that putting more effort into the character and just leave background to none was quite good decision, even though I always like to see how artists solve the challenge of fitting a character into the background and vice versa.

@Eb: Glad to hear your uni year is approaching it's closure. How many years do you have left currently? I found that scheduling myself really works out well, but I don't like to keep it too strict.

And WHOA, Eb, that painting in process, the colours are real, real great. You have also managed to capture clouds & smoke quite well, especially if you meant it to be heavy. I also like how you knew to add that white space behind the right floating guy's head, that's a great way to attract some attention to it.

Alright, some probs though. The anatomy of the hills could use some rehashing the next time. Right now they appear quite flat and oddly connected. I see you have had great deal of references when you build up your characters, it's real important to ref the background too. For example, take a peek here, it is not quite the composition you have painted, but has some resemblances: http://www.albertbierstadt.org/Liber...-Yosemite.html
Apart from the anatomy and texture of such a cliff/hill, notice how the cliff in the left gets behind the cliff in the right? That's one great technique to create some depth, and would probably work real nice in your piece too.

You have some athmospheric perspective going on, which is good. However, in this case it is a bit too strong, as the hills aren't that far back and clouds are blocking most of the sky. That brings us to another problem at hand, the colours. I really like what you did with the colours up high, but the blue glow in the bottom kinda disorients me. Where is it coming from? Clouds should be blocking off most of the light, so the bottom should be quite dark and rather same colour as the sky. Keep in mind how light bounces off objects and causes colour to transfer too, even though it is one of the hardest things to predict when speaking of colour theory.

You could also probably enhance the feeling that the front figures are on a ledge of a deep chasm. Some tricks like darkening the foreground and/or adding some dead looking foliage could do a few tricks, but the best way is really to observe the real nature and how the masters have done it before.

Feel free to be real critical to what I have posted above, because it definitely isn't a professional opinion such as Mike's. I am happy to be able to contribute with some critics this time. You both do so much of figure & character work, and I am real poor with those, thus can't really give any good opinions. So, more environments & backgrounds peeps so I can do some writing.

@personal: I didn't have very much time in the weekend to chime into the orange rocks project, both days were full of high school graduation party preparations and such. However, I was able to make some progress with it, and I am quite happy how it is rolling now. I will post the next iteration tomorrow.

And once again, great to see you both so active again, even if just for a while.

Eelis

EDIT: Ohop, I forgot to add that I bought a domain recently: www.eelisk.com
I haven't been able to build up the site yet, but hoping to do it soonish.

[Wheeljack18]

Eb Crit:

What Ellis Said. lol I think Eelis did a great job talking about the background stuff so I won't go there. Good job Eelis! What I want to talk about is design. This all your own personal aesthetic but I want to challenge you to think about it and I'm going to point out a few things and I want you to consider them.

Exhibit 1: Background shape pattern. What does that look like to you?

Exhibit 2: Character Shape Pattern: Notice the arrow shapes and how they work against each other?

Exhibit 3: Patterns combined: Now what do you think? How well do the patterns work together?

Exhibit 4: Shape Notes and Eye Guides.
Pink Arrows: These indicate the viewers eye as it goes through the characters. You have a circle in the characters action which works real nicely. Well done. But.. notice the area near the lower character's right hand. See how it points down and away and how the curve of the cloak leads you off the canvas? Now we already have a nice story element at the hand and the legs take it up from there and lead you back into the page. In most cases you can stop here and be fine but if you want to take it further, maybe you could add another element to bring the viewers eye back in? Maybe a random fold in the cloak or an arrow shaped break in the background smoke?

Green Arrows and lines:
The curves of the hills are pointing directly to the character in the foreground and serve to lead you in. When I get to his left arm area I am really distracted by it and the negative shape in the corner. It's too much of a curve. It is boring and it is empty. It is useful space and the shape makes another arrow which can lead your eye off of the canvas. I drew in a black line to indicate his arm going off camera and a blue shape to demonstrate the arrow the new negative shape makes. Now we have two shapes which point to the focal point in the image. Two is better than none right? Also, think about your body, when you get startled, do you only react with your right side? This is an illustration so why not use every tool you can in order to tell the story.

Blue Shapes: Possible fixes to enhance the movement on the canvas.

I want you to look critically at the shape design of this piece and some of the elements that I am pointing out. For a student piece, you are already way ahead of the game when it comes to compositional design so don't kill yourself over this. The thing is, you should be thinking about these things and their impact on the image as a whole. Rarely do you get the time in the real world to work these things out to your hearts content but with practice, you will start to apply these principles to your work with little effort. The trick will then be to come up with an interesting composition or to take an AD's direction and make it interesting and do it all within your time constraints. When you figure it out you can let me know

There already is a lot of movement in this piece but I want to encourage you to be aggressive and confident in your mark making. I think it will help to enhance the feeling of surprise you are going for, especially in the foreground character.

Lastly: I am having a problem with the tiered curve shapes your background is making. They are flattening out the canvas and work horizontally against a vertical image. The top curve is nearly directly parallel from the floating guys head. You might consider dropping that shape to below his shoulder. I think that this could create more depth and create another triangular shape on the right side and a more triangular composition would give your image more vertical thrust.

I hope that you find this helpful and I look forward to the next iteration.


Eelis: Have fun at your grad and be safe! I ended my grad night wearing a kilt and jumping over hedgerows to hide from rednecks... heh heh Long Story there

You are only just starting your art education so don't beat yourself up. I didn't do any figure drawing or any real serious study until I hit art College so you are already ahead of me. If you don't get to have figure drawing sessions in school then yes you should sign up for some outside of class but I would be shocked if you didn't spend at least 2-4 weeks in your first year doing figure drawing. It's such a fundamental exercise and I have never heard of an art school that did not make it a mandatory part of their first year curriculum. Try every technique you can and never stop learning. I consider myself a lifelong student and so should you. This goes for your too Eb! Don't let yourself get caught in a rut and experiment with new medias and techniques. I never want to be that guy who gets pigeon holed into doing the same work for 30 years and never gets to branch out and try new things. For me, that would feel to much like a manufacturing job.

Enough lectures, Great work everybody. Let's keep this activity rolling along!

Cheers

[David Keen]

Guys, what amazing crits! Thank you very much for all the time you spent preparing them.

@Eelis: You are totally right about needing to reference my background. It was a pretty cheeky move trying to get away with vague impressions and I can honestly say I was feeling a little guilty the whole time. I spent some time having a look around today for reference and Bierstad is such a treasure trove of mountain paintings that I pulled up the google art project and zoomed in on some points of interest. I've gone ahead and made some changes to the mountains, making them overlap and breaking up the shape into something a little less stereotypical. I think you're also dead on regarding the light and the way the blue sits in the image. I've tried to bring a little more of the skylight into the mountains and fog but am reluctant to completely paint over the blue glow, I think it adds and otherworldly feel which suits the mood but I do need to work out a story for where the light source really is. I'm going to look into adding a little more interest to the foreground once this layer has dried, so far I've just darkened a few areas but some plants will be incoming soon.

I really appreciate your input so please never be shy in giving me some pointers on what you're seeing in an image. Although I know environments are your speciality you're artistic eye will always see things you think work and don't work in any piece. Awesome crit buddy! I've got just over another 2 years left of uni here in Aus, but with aspirations to do more study overseas who knows how long it will actually be!? How long will your course in Canada be? How far away is the move now?

@Wheels: You are totally right about that left arm! I can't believe I hadn't seen how weird that little space was. As you said, it leads into a dead zone that breaks up my flow and that is as bad for compositions and it is for free style rappers! I'm now waiting for the paint to dry before I put the characters in over the top but I'll be sure to reposition the left arm and add an extra fold onto the cloak on the right side. You'll be the first one I call once I've discovered the holy grail of masterful composition and workflow but until then I'm glad for the little pieces I'm picking up and for Successful Drawing which arrived the other day!

I'm still interested in trying to finish the Sethlan piece when time permits. It's probably going to be a little tight until these paintings are done but after that it'll be go time to get some portfolio pieces done before the workshop in July. It was refreshing to take a break from all the composition work and just focus on a single figure again. I think my appreciation for the difference between concepting and full illustrations is becoming a little more solid as I work on these paintings.

Everyone: What is the next move for Daedelus projects? Should we set another brief now so you guys can get cracking on the next thing and I can catch up when I get a little time? I'd be really keen to get an enviro piece as set by Eelis. Have you got anything you've been waiting to have a crack at Eelis? Thanks again for the crits guys. Sorry for the crappy photo for the update, the paint is starting to dry in places so the surface lighting is a little inconsistant for my phone camera.

[Wheeljack18]

Hey guys,

Good work Eb, keep it coming. For me, I have a few days of down time before some assignments kick in and I was thinking about doing the art Order D & D challenge. I want to tackle the Monster cook. My idea is to illustrate a Gnoll cook in his shack on a rainy miserable day. That or I'd like to do a Redo of a classic Forgotten Realms Novel from the 90's Azure Bonds. These are the ideas on my mind at the moment. The main goal is to add another piece to my portfolio. I want to have some cover illustration examples, Mood/ Key frame illustration and of course, more concept work.

Your thoughts?

[David Keen]

@Mike: I agree that it's a good idea to try and get something together for the artorder challenge. I'll have another look through the brief and see what takes my fancy. From the ideas you've listed I'd be most interested in seeing you have a crack at the redo of Azure Bonds, that cover looks right up your alley and is prime for a new interpretation. How far do you want to push the design of your version? A completely new composition and character designs or something that sticks closer to the original? Looking forward to seeing you work through this one.

@Eelis: How's your painting from earlier going? Are you still chipping away at it? I'm excited to see the final.

[Wheeljack18]

Hey Fellas,

I just picked up 3 gigs so don't Expect too much Deadelus work but I will share what I can ongoing.

I'm torn between the Azure Bonds and the Gnoll Cook. I will do both eventually. For Azure Bonds, I would keep the character design because it is so Iconic( to me). I would modernize it and I've already got the model picked out. The thing that lacks the most in the original I think is movement. The whole composition is vertical and static. Let's see some action! Let's see some energy! Not just a babe in a chain mail bikini. To prep for it I'm going to re-read the novel and try to come up with some ideas. Currently I'm reading " A Princess of Mars" by Edgar R Burroughs. Great book and just the Pulpy space odessy I was craving. Give it a shot if you are so inclined. I must say that the new cover is illustrated by Kekai Kotaki and it's sub par compared to most of his work. It's as though he submitted a concept or only half completed the image. Worse yet is the creature on the cover is either a white ape or a Thark but either way you can tell that he didn't even google the character descriptions because he's way off. Eb, when you go to his lecture, you should work up the guts to challenge him on that and ask him why he half assed the gig? Maybe in a more PC manner but I would be interested to hear an explanation.

Cheers!

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Ohhhooo, I am back!

@eb: No probs, it was great to help ya out. And darn, those changes you made are really fabulous. The image reads a lot better now. It was a good move to open up the sky a bit, the blue glow looks alot more seamless now and I agree that you should keep it. The lightsource seems pretty strong, so you could probably try to enhance the highlights just a bit there and here.

Bierstadt's works are great. He was a member of that Hudson River School group. Their trademark is that luminous light, so easy to recognize.

Yeah, why not more studies while grabbing up connections and such (if that's your goal). "Master of" sounds real neat! The canadian bachelor's program is four year one too, then master was somewhere around 2 or 3. I'll be moving real early in August, so about exactly two months to go!

Would be fun to do a Daedelus project again in the future when we all got time for it. I am open to everything, so let's see when all of us have some free space in our schedules. Personally I would like to do some Urban/rural cityscape or close/mid-view picture of a forest of sort.

@Mike: No probs. Work before leisure!
Thanks about the grad warning. Actually, I am such an oddbird absolutist, so I just end up taking care of others if needed. Sounds like you had quite an adventure there then, can't even imagine.
And yeah, I might come across as rather critical fellow to my own doings, but actually it is just honest enthuasism over things I am yet to try & should be doing more. I don't stress about it, but really want to just do as much effective learning & such as I possibly can. On a note, I have looked into courses that I will be taking next fall, and found out I can include this real neat sounding course:http://www.ecuad.ca/programs/courses/ILUS/200/S001 Can't wait to tackle that! However, it seems likely that this is the only course I'll be able to fetch that really dwells into the technical side of things. What I have gathered the core visual arts stuido course is really artsy art course. Seems likely I'll have to attend a group outside of school. Could be even more benefical though.

And as you said, gotta keep on moving with the tech and mediums. Especially between mediums for me, since I do way too much digital stuff.

Oh, that Kotaki stuff sounds rather weird. Is it this cover? http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GZ3lVTMsCC...1600/kekai.jpg

@Personal: Alright! Here's the last iteration of the composition of the orange rock image. I will plunge into the details now. I am rather bad portraying real contrast drama in the finished comp plans, so it should get better when I get the detailing done.



Either way I'll want to start taking my paintings to a more realistic approach á la Bierstadt and co. Meaning, I want the whole scapes to look more believeable in their core, the placement of elements and such. It is of course the sum of overall.

I am going break the ledge gazer loop the next time and do something mid-sized with absolutely ZERO mountains. But before that, I'll render this and do some masterstudies!

Eelis

[Wheeljack18]

That's the kekai image Eelis. Not his best work by a long shot and I'm being harsh because I respect his work and I hate seeing guys cut corners. I'm sure there is a reason but I'm not happy with the cover. Both as a fan of the series and a follower of the artist.

I checked out that course description you posted and it doesn't say much about the actual course content. When you touch down in Vancouver and get settled at EC. Make an appointment with a councilor and go over your schedule with that person and let them know what your art goals are. It's their job to help you get the most out of your education so don't be shy about it.

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Mm, from what I gathered, it is kinda open-style course with loads of back n forth criticism. But yeah, I definitely have to speak up with guidance councilor to make the best possible choices. A pretty big pile of money is at stake.

Anyways, I've quite completed the rendering now to the best of my ability. I am however waiting for a pretty probable paint-over in one live stream next wednesday to add the finishing touch. The snowy ridge area on the right still bugs the hell out of me. I'll do some masterstudies and speedpaints meanwhile. Going to do something pretty different from my usual stuff the next time, so watch out!

Everything looks so much better in the thumbnails

[Wheeljack18]

Hey Eelis,

Are you ready to branch out and do something more figurative yet? If not, I'd like to see you take a shot at the industrial /city environment scene you mentioned. I'd like to see a dramatic alleyway or an old condemned building. OR.. you could try something based off of a fictional setting.

Cheers!